By JEFF AMY, JACK BROOK and STEPHEN SMITH, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Carnival season 2025 is approaching its climax in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast, with big parades rolling down the main routes as some revelers get fancied up for formal balls while others dress in costume to poke fun and make merry.

Three parades will roll Thursday night in New Orleans with scores of masked riders on colorful floats. More processions will continue every day through Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. Costumed revelers will jam the French Quarter as more parades roll in New Orleans’ suburbs, other Louisiana cities, and all along the Mississippi and Alabama coasts.

What is Mardi Gras?

Carnival in New Orleans and around the world is rooted in Christian and Roman Catholic traditions. The season begins on Jan. 6, the 12th day after Christmas, and continues until Mardi Gras, which is the final day of feasting, drinking and revelry before Ash Wednesday and the fasting associated with Lent, the Christian season of preparation for Easter.

FILE – Rex, the King of Carnival, rides in the Krewe of Rex as he arrives at Canal St. on Mardi Gras day in New Orleans, March 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Carnival celebrations have become thoroughly secularized in New Orleans, where the largest and best-known celebrations in the U.S. include street parties, fancy balls and boisterous parades. Some of the parades are high-tech extravaganzas that feature massive floats laden with flashing lights and giant moving figures.

“It’s all about family. It’s like a six-mile-long block party and nothing could be more fun. It’s for everyone,” said Virginia Saussy of the Krewe of Muses, which is set to parade Thursday night. “You got to come experience it to understand.”

How else do people celebrate Mardi Gras?

On Mardi Gras in southwest Louisiana, some people will take part in the Cajun French tradition of the Courir de Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday Run. These rural processions, with links to rituals from medieval France, feature masked and costumed riders, with stops where participants perform and beg for goods. Inebriated maskers often chase live chickens to include in a communal gumbo at the end of the day.

FILE – Revelers throw beads from the balcony of the Royal Sonesta Hotel onto crowds on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras festivities in the French Quarter in New Orleans, March 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

In New Orleans, some African Americans mask in elaborate beaded and feathered Mardi Gras Indian suits, roving the city to sing, dance, drum and perform. The tradition, a central part of the Black Carnival experience in New Orleans since at least the late 1800s, is believed to have started in part as a way to pay homage to area Native Americans for their assistance to Black people and runaway slaves. It also developed at a time when segregation barred Black residents from taking part in whites-only parades.

How is New Orleans reacting to the New Year’s Day attack?

Following the Jan. 1 truck attack that killed 14 people in the heart of New Orleans, the Department of Homeland Security upgraded Mardi Gras to its highest risk rating. This means there will be significantly more law enforcement officers present than in prior years, said Eric DeLaune, who is leading Mardi Gras security as special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New Orleans.

FILE – Revelers play brass band music as they begin the march of the Society of Saint Anne Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, Feb. 17, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

The city hosted the Super Bowl in early February and will employ many of the same security measures: SWAT teams on standby, armored vehicles along street corners, helicopters circling overhead and plainclothes agents mingling in crowds. The city will deploy 600 police officers, along with hundreds more from state and local agencies.

“We’ve made an effort to make carnival season as safe as we possibly can without intruding on the historical and cultural context of Mardi Gras,” said DeLaune, a Louisiana native who grew up attending the parades. “We didn’t want to change the feel of Mardi Gras.”

What are other security precautions?

Thousands of revelers will gather along the city’s oak and mansion-lined St. Charles Avenue to watch towering floats, marching bands and celebrities parade. To protect them, a “serpentine” layout of heavy barricades has been arranged on the road’s opposite side to bar fast-moving vehicles while still allowing traffic.

FILE – Revelers fill Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras day in New Orleans, Feb. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Rusty Costanza, File)

“You’re going to weave it like a snake,” New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told reporters at a February press conference. “That will slow anybody down who thinks they are going to use a vehicle as a weapon.”

Drones are banned, she added. Ice chests and coolers — which had been used to plant explosives during the Jan. 1 attack — will remain barred from the busiest section of the city’s historic French Quarter, said Louisiana State Police Superintendent Robert Hodges.

Why is Mardi Gras so late this year?

Because it’s linked to Easter, the date of Mardi Gras can fall anywhere between Feb. 3 and March 9. That’s because Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

FILE – The brass section of the MAX high school band marches during the Hermes Parade on St. Charles Ave., in New Orleans, Feb. 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

This year’s date of March 4 is one of the latest possible. That means warmer temperatures are likely along the Gulf Coast rather than the often cool and clammy weather of February. However, there’s a chance of rain on Tuesday in the region.

What are ‘throws?’

“Throw” is a noun used to describe the trinkets that float riders in parades and walking members of carnival clubs — known as krewes — give to spectators. Shimmery strings of plastic beads are ubiquitous, although some krewes are exploring alternatives out of environmental concerns. Participants in the parade of New Orleans’ Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club hand out highly sought-after painted coconuts.

FILE – Jeff Thomas and Shelton Pollet find a rare peaceful spot on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans, Feb. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Rusty Costanza, File)

At Thursday’s Muses parade, glittery hand-decorated shoes are the prize souvenir.

“The first year we created a bead that was a stiletto shoe and it was just to be a commemorative bead — but it took off,” said Saussy, who is the chairwoman of Muses’ theme and floats. “People love shoes, who knew?”

Amy reported from Atlanta.

By Nada Hassanein, Stateline.org

As bird flu cases inundate more poultry and dairy farms, state officials worry that the Trump administration’s firings of federal scientists and other actions will undermine efforts to track the virus and protect Americans.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rushed to rehire workers who were involved in responding to the outbreak and were fired amid federal workforce cuts. These employees were part of a federal network that oversees labs responsible for collecting samples and confirming H5N1 tests.

State officials also fear funding cuts will hamper those federal labs, and say that by scrubbing some public health data from government websites, the administration may complicate efforts to track the outbreak.

Federal labs are “key for us to be able to do our work, and we need to make sure those labs stay funded, or we can’t do what we do,” said Dr. Amber Itle, the state veterinarian for Washington state. Itle said federal money pays for most of her office’s bird flu efforts, and that the nation’s bird flu surveillance system — one of the most robust in the world — needs to stay in place.

President Donald Trump’s budget cuts and firings include thousands of terminations across the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among others. While the USDA scrambled to rehire its workers, public health experts say federal agencies often work in tandem to respond to health emergencies.

A dozen probationary employees also were let go this month at the Manhattan, Kansas-based National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a USDA spokesperson told Stateline. The federal facility works closely with the USDA and aims to protect agricultural systems against animal diseases. The spokesperson said these positions were administrative and “not deemed essential to the functions of the lab.”

“When we start to take away resources that we need to support animal health response, that ultimately could threaten public health,” Itle said, “because if we can’t find it in animals, we could be exposing people without knowing it.”

The Trump administration initially removed reams of public health data related to poverty, pollution, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, adolescent health, racial inequities, sex, gender and LGBTQ+ people from federal agency websites. Some of the data was quickly restored. But Washington state health officials said they are downloading bird flu-related information in case it disappears.

Michael Crusan, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, compared state-federal bird flu cooperation to a dance.

“You can’t swing dance without a partner,” Crusan said. “So how are we supposed to keep this process running smoothly?”

70 human cases

The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, known as H5N1, has killed millions of wild birds and has led to emergency culling of commercial flocks.

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Nationwide, there have been 70 confirmed human cases since 2024, according to the CDC. Most of these cases have been among farmworkers, who are in daily close contact with poultry and cattle.

California has tracked the most cases, with 38 patients, nearly all exposed to the virus from dairy herds, followed by Washington state with 11 cases. Other infections in humans have been confirmed in Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin.

In recent weeks, Ohio and Wyoming reported their first human cases of the virus. A CDC study found cases among three dairy veterinarians, with one working in a state that had no infected cattle.

In January, a patient in Louisiana died after contracting the virus, the first human death from bird flu. The patient was an older adult with underlying medical conditions, and had contracted the virus after exposure to a backyard flock and wild birds.

Hospitalization remains rare. For now, bird flu doesn’t easily infect humans and doesn’t spread from person to person, health experts say. The CDC says there is little risk to the general public, but that could change as the virus mutates and continues to infect mammals such as cattle. The virus also has been found in domestic cats.

To eradicate bird flu, experts are emphasizing comprehensive case surveillance, testing and an overall public health strategy that recognizes the interdependence of humans, animals and the environment.

“You can’t have healthy humans without healthy animals, wild and domestic, and healthy environments,” said Maurice Pitesky, a food security expert at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Ultimately, you’re trying to reduce the potential of the virus to move from those wild waterfowl to those farm animals.”

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the pressure is mounting to safeguard farms.

“The longer this virus circulates on farms, especially infecting dairy cattle and exposing humans that work on those farms, the more chances it has to evolve to something that is more dangerous for humans,” Adalja said.

The virus has been detected in more than 200 mostly wild and feral mammals in the U.S. since 2022. Those mammals may have become infected from eating fresh wild bird carcasses, but there is no indication of transmission from mammal to mammal, experts say.

A recent CDC study found cases in two indoor cats belonging to dairy farmworkers. Other infections in cats have been linked to raw pet food. Officials are urging people to refrain from drinking raw milk and from feeding dogs and cats raw pet food.

“The more mammals it infects,” Adalja said, “the more chances it has to adapt to mammals.”

All 50 states

More than 166 million birds across all 50 states have been infected nationwide since 2022, according to CDC data as of Tuesday. Over the past month, the virus has been detected in 86 commercial flocks and 51 backyard flocks. Infected poultry flocks must be culled when an outbreak occurs. In groceries nationwide, egg prices have surged amid the shortages.

The virus is also suspected in recent die-offs of wild birds. In five Michigan counties as of mid-February, more than 300 dead wild birds, including geese and mallard ducks, have been found, the state Department of Natural Resources reported. The department has issued guidance on how waterfowl hunters and property owners can stay safe when encountering dead birds.

Melinda Cosgrove, laboratory scientist manager at the department’s Wildlife Health Section, said her state’s confirmed positive cases are mostly in poultry flocks. To stay abreast of potential cases in the wild, the state has an “Eyes in the Field” webpage by which residents can report sick or dead wildlife to help the department track potential cases.

Those migratory birds are behind the spread across farms, said Kevin Snekvik, executive director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory. “Birds migrating north and south up to Alaska, they’re the culprits,” said Snekvik, who is also a professor at Washington State University’s Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology.

States have also been monitoring changes in bird flu patterns by tracking the virus in wastewater. The U.S. has long avoided vaccination of poultry because many of its trading partners will not import vaccinated birds. But federal officials earlier this month gave conditional approval of an updated version of a previous vaccine to protect poultry against the H5N1 virus.

Farmworker testing

In Nevada, a recent spillover to dairy cattle of a specific H5N1 genotype previously found in birds was detected in a milk sample, officials announced earlier this month.

Seventeen states have reported outbreaks in dairy cows. Cows usually recover from the virus, but cattle must be isolated when the virus is detected to prevent further spread. It can be spread to humans through close contact.

Despite the widespread cases in dairy farms, not all states have joined a federal-state partnership to test milk. Currently, 36 states test under the surveillance strategy.

Helping dairy and poultry farmworkers get tested is important for public health response. But many farmworkers are immigrants with no sick leave and who may speak primarily Indigenous languages or Spanish. The Trump administration’s deportation efforts have caused further reticence to report symptoms, said Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, a food systems scholar and human geographer at Syracuse University who studies agricultural labor.

“You have a population of workers who don’t have access to health care to begin with,” she said, noting how many dairy farm laborers live in rural or remote places far from city centers. “You have this geographical barrier. You have a linguistic barrier. You have a cultural barrier. And then, of course, today, you have on top of it a lot of fear.”

Since dairy cattle infections were first detected in California in September 2024, the state’s Animal Health and Safety Lab, the only lab in the state handling the most dangerous samples, has received between 400 and 2,000 samples weekly, lab director Ashley Hill wrote in an email to Stateline.

The lab currently has just five technicians authorized to do most of the testing and a handful of support staff who can chip in. Lab technicians are set to strike this week along with university health care, research and technical professionals across the state, according to the union, which represents 20,000 workers.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A spike in demand for electricity from tech companies competing in the artificial intelligence race is upending forecasts for natural gas-fired power in the U.S., as utilities reconsider it as a major new power source.

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That is not what many scientists and climate activists envisioned in the fight against climate change. And it is endangering progress on the greenhouse gas-reduction goals that scientists say are necessary to manage the damage from burning fossil fuels that warms the planet.

Across the nation, tech companies are snapping up real estate and seeking new power projects to feed their energy-hungry operations.

In some cases, Big Tech is building climate-friendlier projects like solar, wind, geothermal or battery storage.

But industry decision-makers are also turning to natural gas for what they say is a cheap and reliable source of power, raising the prospect that gas-fired power will play a bigger role — and for a longer period of time — than even they had anticipated.

“Gas is growing faster now and in the medium term than ever before,” said Corianna Mah, a power and renewables analyst at data analytics firm Enverus.

Before the spike in electricity demand last year, many in the industry had assumed that there would be few new gas plants and that the nation’s fleet would gradually retire in favor of a grid powered by wind, solar, geothermal, batteries and possibly the next generation of nuclear power — sources that don’t emit the planet-warming greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

For many countries, that ramp down is happening as they work toward the goal of slashing their emissions to zero — or at least, net zero — by 2050, which scientists say could help the world avoid the worst effects of climate change.

In the U.S., the electric power sector is the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to government figures. And the construction of every new natural gas plant — built to last for decades — is a setback for climate goals, said John Quigley, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.

“At a top level, we will not get to net zero by 2050 if we are building new gas plants. Period,” Quigley said.

Burning natural gas emits carbon dioxide, and before that, when it escapes from wellheads or pipelines in its unburned form, it’s an even more potent greenhouse gas called methane.

Quigley and others say there is enough solar, wind and battery storage projects on the drawing board to satisfy growing electricity demand. But, they say, utilities and grid operators lack the will to abandon natural gas.

Enverus now projects the next five years will bring roughly 46 gigawatts of gas-fired power online. That compares to 39 gigawatts in the past five years, it said.

Announcements last year alone include:

— two 705-megawatt plants by Evergy in Kansas;

— Entergy’s 2,300-megawatt plant to serve Meta’s $10 billion AI data center in northern Louisiana, a pair of new plants in Texas and another in Mississippi;

— a 1,450-megawatt plant by the Tennessee Valley Authority;

— a 1,400 megawatt Duke Energy project in North Carolina;

— and Georgia Power’s plans for three oil or gas units with a capacity of up to 1,300 megawatts.

And that’s not all.

Calpine said it’s exploring new gas-fired capacity in the congested mid-Atlantic region, especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, where analysts say the grid operator is trying to fast-track new gas-fired power plants into service.

In Pennsylvania, the former Homer City coal-fired power plant is being transformed into a massive gas-fired station that’s expected to supply a data center — and got a $5 million state grant to do it.

On top of the artificial intelligence boom, the frenzy for new electricity is fueled by cryptomining, the broader electrification of society and a bipartisan push to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

It is coinciding with the closure of coal plants and aging nuclear plants, unable to compete with cheaper gas, solar and wind.

Across the U.S., gas pipeline operators are exuberant about the new demand and are reporting strong interest in extending their lines.

Chris Kalnin, the CEO of BKV, the largest natural-gas producer in the Barnett Shale gas reservoir in Texas, said the trend there is toward gas plants being built next to data centers in a booming data center corridor in metropolitan Dallas.

Data center developers there are in an “arms race” to secure power, Kalnin said.

“Data center guys are trying to source power and trying to get to market with their data centers as fast as possible,” Kalnin said. The key to signing up cloud-computing customers “is getting your facility online quickly and getting your facility online quickly requires you to have power and dependable power and a cost-efficient power source.”

Rob Jennings of the American Petroleum Institute, said the sudden growth in actual and forecast electricity demand has put a premium on power sources that can be built fast and cheaply and are reliable.

That means natural gas is once again attractive to investors over solar and wind, he said.

“In the near term, the reality has dawned on most that it has to be gas,” Jennings said.

Industry officials say they strive to deliver electricity that is clean, reliable and affordable.

For instance, some new gas plants are replacing higher-pollution coal-fired plants, some are designed to run only at times of high demand, some are paired with battery storage or a wind farm nearby and some are designed with carbon-capture technology or to run on a hydrogen blend, said Alex Bond of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies.

At the very least, building gas-fired capacity will have high-level political support.

In his remarks to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, President Donald Trump declared that he’d issue “emergency declarations” to get coal – and gas-plants built to make the U.S. a superpower of manufacturing, cryptomining and artificial intelligence.

But Amanda Levin of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the U.S. must take big steps by 2035 to reduce its reliance on gas.

That means slashing a fleet of roughly 1,500 gas plants down to about 100 if the U.S. is to meet strong climate commitments and preserve a chance of addressing climate change, she said.

Still, she said there are reasons to be optimistic that gas plant projects on the drawing board won’t get built.

In recent weeks, Chinese tech startup Deepseek released a new AI model that it boasted was on par with similar models from U.S. companies and at a fraction of the cost — calling into question the need for a massive expansion of energy-hungry data centers.

And some analysts believe utilities overestimate the electricity they’ll need, essentially by double- or triple-counting data center proposals when firms express interest in multiple locations — but only build in one.

Besides, Levin said, data center operators are getting better at energy efficiency, particularly in how they cool their servers.

Even if all the gas plants are built, they may not get used, she said.

“There are a lot of reasons,” Levin said, “for why we might not actually see all of this (demand) materialize.”

Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Dave St. Peter’s long tenure as the Twins’ club president and CEO will come to a conclusion on Monday when he officially moves into a role of strategic advisor.

At that point, Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey will be elevated into a new role, becoming the first person in Twins history to hold the title of president in charge of baseball and business operations.

The Twins announced this plan in November but at that time said only that the transition would take place in the first quarter of 2025. Now, the Twins have set a date for the organizational shift.

St. Peter, who joined the Twins as an intern in 1990, has been team president for 22 years and became the Twins’ CEO in 2016. He will continue to advise on a number of topics, including Twins.TV, the Twins’ new broadcast home, and the Pohlad family’s exploration of a team sale.

Falvey, who has overseen the Twins’ baseball operations department since his hiring in 2016, will become the Twins’ fifth club president.

At the same time the Twins announced they were shifting Falvey to this new role, they announced that Jeremy Zoll had been promoted to general manager. They have since promoted three more people to assistant general manage roles.

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